Topics

1

[Max] Bug Reporting / Reflection/roughness being directly effected by brigtness of diffuse

« on: 2024-04-03, 12:22:13 »

So I have seemed to have come across a bug where by the diffuse input is effecting the reflection/roughness of the material.

The best way I can explain is that I am doing a stone paved flooring. I've downloaded some textures, however the the diffuse is too dark. So I apply a colour correct to lighten the texture and I noticed in the beauty pass that the grout starts to become increasingly more reflective, even though its just the standard material setup with just a diffuse texture inputted.

I then check the reflection pass and I can see the lighter the texture becomes it then directly effects the reflection value and the material starts to become more reflective in certain areas as if I have applied a texture to give that effect.

I've now tried it with the legacy material and the effect is considerably reduced but still visible to a degree.

Am I totally misunderstanding what is going on or should be happening? I thought (outside of the "metal" shader) that the reflection/roughness etc was totally separate from the diffuse input and so it should then not matter at all whatever I put into the diffuse it should not effect the reflection properties of the material?

Apologies if I have totally misunderstood what is going on at shader level, I've just never witnessed this before.

I've attached a screenshot of a region to illustrate this. The only difference between the two is the colour correct input of a 0.2 brightness and -0.4 saturation. Same sort of effect is caused when using the Linear HDR adjustment (which is what I did before originally)

2

[Max] I need help! / Unable to import Cryptomatte

« on: 2022-12-13, 17:54:59 »

Hey,

I'm having major issues in being able to import/use Cryptomatte. I'm unable to rename/convert the .cxr file which is instructed on the online guide to an .exr which means I can't load it into Photoshop.

I might be wrong but any time I've renamed a file and changed the extension it just changes the file. However the .cxr file type remains.

Is there like a totally idiot proof guide online to demonstrate this how to work. I am sure I am doing everything correct but it seems like the files just will not change. I don't understand why its so hard lol

Cheers!

3

[Max] I need help! / Phoniex - Water Sim calculated - now how to send to render?

« on: 2022-12-09, 19:07:07 »

Hey,

I've got a little bit of an issue which I am struggling to find the answer online.

In short -

I've got a water simulation rendered with Phoniex.

I want to render just frame 20 of this simulation.

I have tried sending it to backburner through the normal (submit to network) and it hasn't worked. I thought it would just have the simulation data saved and so it would act just like it does when I hit render on Max.

So my question is this.

How do I render a specific frame of my simulation on backburner as it gives me all the nice effects like motion blur etc that I want. Worst case I can back into a mesh and render but it will look nowhere near as nice. I've taken a look at albemic files but so far I've not managed to get it to work. I've tried the online guide to submit to BackBurner but it doesn't appear to work either.

Any help would be awesome.

Right now my fail safe is to simply render as open on max and then come back to the office later and start the other queued up renders.

Cheers!

4

[Max] Feature Requests / Multi Exposure Pass

« on: 2022-12-08, 11:05:12 »

So this may be a bit of a "cop out" feature request.

Essentially I am working on a project that is for some flooring and the customer obviously wants their product to be easily visible, but given the angle I am running into burnout/reflection that understandably happens.

There is a bit of a workaround to that, I can just lower the exposure in the frame buffer and the details are still there.. but then the image is too dark overall.

So I can save 2 versions out and then blend them together. Easy fix.. just slightly time consuming.

Sooooooooooo given that the exposure doesn't effect the render needing to be rendered, I was thinking a sort of "exposure element" pass where by you can sort of "override" the VFB exposure level and it would save out a version with a lowered exposure. To further that too, it could be added with a mask feature as well (if that wouldn't be too much to ask! haha) where you could say "object selection" or I guess "MAT ID" etc and then you'd get the same selection saved out, just with a different exposure value.

I know there is a workaround already, just thought this might be useful in a sort of niche way.

5

[Max] I need help! / VFB / Tonemapping seems to randomly reset itself to default values?

« on: 2022-12-07, 10:25:00 »

Hi!

Not sure if anyone has had this issue or perhaps knows what I might be doing to cause this, however I've noticed (what currently appears to be fairly random) that when I open a scene for some reason the VFB/Tonemapping is all reset to default values and any extra curves or LUT that I have added have been removed.

This has happened now quite a few times and I've just learnt to always save a VFB file to help prevent any headaches, but I just wondered if this is something anyone had noticed at all?

Cheers!

6

General CG Discussion / Where do you download Phoenix - Premium Sub

« on: 2022-11-30, 11:11:10 »

Hello,

I must be totally blind! haha I can't for the life of me find where/how to download Phoniex (covered in the premium subscription right?) to install it. Going through "My Chaos" I just go round in circles of Corona 9 Hotfix or Corona 9 download links OR Chaos Trial download which only gives me options for downloading VRAY.

I'm sure given that I am paying for the Premium sub that I am doing something stupid so apologies but given that I am on a client deadline I thought just best to ask.

I was hoping that there would be a simple upfront download all supported/covered plugins under my account but that doesn't appear to be the case. Any help in this would be awesome.

Cheers!

7

Hardware / Sorry for the basic question: How to build a network?

« on: 2021-12-15, 18:21:51 »

Hi all,

Firstly I want to start with an apology for what must be the most basic question of what is possibly a long winded answer and I don't expect any lengthy reply. I do ask however if anyone is able to share a link, video, PDF etc of really a step by step guide on building a render network, from the hardware (not so fussed about the specs used in the nodes etc, just more so what is needed for it to work) and then the guide of putting it all together so it is up and running with all machines communicating.

Now I appreciate other people may be wanting to know how to do something similar so what I will do is post a link to a page which I have found quite helpful, although its still not "hand holding" enough for me to understand what exactly I need and to do to set up a small network.

https://www.cgdirector.com/how-to-build-your-own-render-farm/

My situation is that right now I am not desperate to buy a small render network for myself, however with things hopefully moving in a positive way I may need to look outside the realms of just locally rendering my work overnight on my current machine.

Ideally if I could come up with a system where I can add more machines in the future that could link up to a server (essentially your typical business model I guess) then that would be great, although perhaps for a short term fix a way of just connecting another render node/workstation to my machine to pick up a job etc that would be good to know too.

Thanks in advance :)

PS I have tried searching the forum but it seems that everyone asking the network question already knows more than I do so their questions are not basic enough for me...

8

[Max] I need help! / Render Object selection with reflections of object in scene

« on: 2021-10-20, 17:42:00 »

Hi,

Sorry but I can't figure this one out and its driving me a little nuts!

I have a scene where I need to replace an objects shader (configurator) numerous times. Now the objects in question obviously reflect in other elements in within the scene and I want to be able to capture those reflections within the object render selection.

So as an example.

I have white room with mild reflective properties, enough to see a faint reflection of the orange ball that sits in the middle of the scene. I now want to make that orange ball black with blue stripes, I apply the new shader and want to render the ball. However the reflection within the roomset is still of the orange ball, so without needing to render the whole scene, I just select the ball and hit render. This then includes the reflections cast on the rest of the room, so in photoshop I can just drop the new layer in which is of the ball and its captured reflections and overlay it.

I'm trying to get away from relying on FStorm (having to work with some other visualisers which do not use this engine) which does this feature perfectly with its render object mask in the kernel settings and I have no doubt Corona can do this as well, I just can't for the life of me find out how. The best I have found is of the shadow catcher, but I can only assume this could work if I applied the that shadow Catcher material to the WHOLE scene and render it like that? which just seems like a huge pain to set up as for each element I need to render I would have to have a shadow catcher variant of the scene specifically for it.

Any advice on this?

If I am allowed I'll include the image which demonstrates exactly what I am after.

https://fstormrender.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RenderMaskM.jpg

Any help on this would be hugely appreciated.

9

[Max] Feature Requests / Material Conversion - Refraction level set to 1

« on: 2021-10-08, 18:27:25 »

Hi,

Maybe I am doing something wrong so apologies if so!

I am converting materials from FStorm to Corona which by the script I think basically means FStorm > Corona Legacy > Corona Physical (order of conversion when running the script and then running the corona converter again to get everything to move over to the new physical material.

In short the issue I am noticing is that the corona converter is making the new materials have a refraction amount of 1 which means its essentially like glass. I was wondering if it would make sense to have this setting set to a default of 0 or an option to approve that setting as a default?

I hope that makes sense! Its been a long week haha.

10

General CG Discussion / 3D Model Licensing

« on: 2021-02-10, 14:00:46 »

Hi, I was wondering if anyone is any the wiser on "editorial" uses of models.

In short I am interested in buying a sofa model from turbosquid but it has the "editorial" license attached. Now looking at the guidelines I would only be able to use this for essentially "the greater good" and not for if I were to use it in my portfolio as that would be surely classed as self advertisement, in this instance a living room scene.

So my question is, is this a license for the model itself to be used and sold as the model or does it apply if you were to use it in any materials such as portfolio or a commercial piece for someone else. I ask because I doubt the author of the model has the rights to sell this furniture item as its from IKEA and is directly making commercial gains from selling it on this site.

I've tried sending a support ticket to turbosquid however nothing has popped up after I submitted it so I don't know if there is a delay in getting it processed.

Thanks in advance for any answers or clarity on this! :)

11

[Max] I need help! / Workflow guidance for large collection of images (batch rendering process)

« on: 2019-10-31, 11:41:46 »

Hi everyone.

I am hoping to find some guidance (links to sources) of how I achieve the following (if it all possible?)

Basically I am having to produce a large quantity of renders of a product in 5 different angles which will need colour correction applying via photoshop/aftereffects in 30 different finishes (to ensure colour matching of finishes).

Essentially I want to know if it is possible to get photoshop or after effects to load up these individual renders and their respective elements and apply the colour corrections in the correct manner (I am thinking of selecting the correct outputted masks)

Or is this something that is not currently possible or would require some specialized script/program to do? I've spoken to one person about this and for something kind of similar a custom script had to be developed for it.

Finally I have tried looking online and so far all I can find are tutorials based on single elements which apply either a crop/resizing/pasting on top a simple graphic. There are none that show element selection, use of multiple selections of masks in a singular action which can be run across multiple renders ie View 1, view 2, view 3, view 4, view 5.

I appreciate there are quite a few batch rendering posts on here and I have tried scanning through to find the answers or atleast an idea and I have been unable to, so apologies in advance if this has already been covered, a simple copy and paste link to what could be the answer is all that I would need and be hugely grateful for.

Thanks everyone :)

12

[Max] I need help! / Small square box of noise appearing towards end of render

« on: 2019-08-29, 10:06:13 »

Hi everyone,

I am having major issues on an animation where by I am getting these weird boxes of high frequency noise. It's happening towards the end of the render, by that I mean when the noise level approaches/drops to the specified amount (first I had it at 2% and then I raised it to 4%)

Its super frustrating because it makes no sense for it to happen, I can understand poor materials or bad lighting to make excessively noisey renders but for the noise to actually emerge towards the lower noise limit is really strange. Also the box of noise jumps around the same area but its not consistent in its placement in that area, if that makes sense?!

I've obviously had a quick look already and I've tried the following.

1. Removed the bloom and Glare from the result (I saw a post about this possibly causing this issue)
2. Increased the noise limit from 2% to 4% I had thought it was caused by some odd over sampling bug.... it looked like it did work but this noise happens on random frames, its not consistent.
3. Tried turning denoising on and off.
4. Changed lighting strengths, removed any outside emissive backplates.
5. Simplified the material, no textures, no crazy high reflection amounts etc

Any suggestions would be welcome. The Scene is lit with a basic corona sun and sky. No overlapping geometry, no weird wholes in any of the meshes etc

13

[Max] Bug Reporting / Automatic image saving on pressing Stop

« on: 2019-06-27, 10:58:28 »

Hi,

I've run into a really frustrating issue where even if I have unchecked the save output (should not save an image) if I press stop on the VFB corona will still save and override existing images that it was previously set to. Is there something I could be doing wrong? I've had a quick look but I couldn't spot anything straight away.


Any help on this would be great :D

14

[Max] Bug Reporting / CXR file overwrite not working?

« on: 2018-01-10, 00:48:26 »

So to keep this short; in 1.6 when rendering a file due to my own system instability and low RAM i would make sure that the save multiple CXR files were enabled to make sure I had a back up of the frame buffer if needed.

However I've noticed recently with now more RAM installed and better system stability the function of overwriting the saved CXR files is no longer working. It only saves the allocated amount so for example 3 files, and then it appears to stop saving them and doesn't overwrite the older files. Any reason why this could be happening?

15

[Max] Resolved Bugs / Destroyed UI on start up

« on: 2015-08-02, 22:52:24 »

Hey guys,

Just installed (and restarted my computer! ) the 1.2 build. As soon as I start it I get the error:

-- Unknown property: "numItems" in underdefined

which I'm not sure if this affects the UI but I'm now missing nearly all buttons from the UI. Although the process of rendering still works.

I'm running 3DS Max 2015 Student Edition on Windows 8.1 build 9600.

Computer specs are:
Intel 5930k
16GB Ram
2x 980gtx

Let me know if you need anything else!

Thanks :)